Matisyahu's Blog

I really do want Safari to be successful, a counter weight to Google hegemony but I was holding out hope that maybe Safari 18.1 and 18.2 would address the lack luster support for MV3, improving their existing native content blocking API to allow a more feature rich experience for extension developers. It appears that as time drags on there really isn’t that drive at Apple – I like the lightweight nature of Safari but what I don’t like is the lack of taking third party extension ecosystem seriously. I’m back on the Chrome train – installed it and started where I left off. Oh, and AdGuard is getting so much love and attention on Chrome when compared to the Safari version which seems to be perpetually stuck in doing the bare minimum to get the impression someone cares when in reality no one actually cares.

Tonight for dinner I have some butter chicken wings along with some vegetarian samosas although I am missing the tamarind chutney which would have really bit the spot. I guess it is one of those things I’ll need to remember to pick up if I buy samosas in the future. I’ve got pay next week so I’ll do some topping up of my freezer and fridge. I am feeling really good today, I’ve gotten over the shock of the election (although I couldn’t help but get the feeling based on the hype and vibes that it was a repeat of 2016), it appears that nice weather is taking away that seasonal depression that becomes a burden to carry over the winter months.

I was going to write an overview of where I thought the election went wrong but ultimately I believe even if the Harris/Walz ticket did everything perfect along with Biden not going for a second term resulting in a primary I still think that the election would have been a loss for the Democrats but maybe with a smaller gap. When you’re dealing with trying to explain inflation and it’s causes, the inability for so many Americans to wrap their head around basic stuff like how tariffs work and who pays the tariff then it is ultimately a fruitless endeavor. There were examples of people searching on the day of election ranging from whether one can change ones vote all the way to asking what a tariff was – I can’t help but get the feeling of a Brexit rerun not to mention any time anyone bought up issues they were labelled ‘project fear’ only for those very same Brexit people now being rather quiet. I wonder whether America really does need to hit rock bottom – to give the voter exactly what the Republicans have in store and allow them to experience the undiluted Republican experience that is devoid of Democrats trying to make bad policies less bad.

Regarding the old anti-trust against the big tech players, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see it shut down on the US side (along with overhauling the FTC) and the Trump administration using funding for Ukraine as leverage over the European Union regarding their anti-trust investigations going on at the moment. There was an interesting point made by Mark Cuban in his opposition to the breaking up of Google (and other technology giants) when he was Real Time with Bill Maher recently. Long story short, the investment into quantum computing and artificial intelligence costs a lot of money, the United States government wishes for the United States to ahead of geopolitical rivals but if one were to reduce the size of these technology companies then the funds have to come from somewhere and that somewhere would be government grants which then opens up a can of worms – turning the government into a honey pot for corruption. Whatever the decision maybe I don’t think there will be many that will be happy with the compromised outcome. It will be interesting to see what happens with the tech sector and whether there will be a culture change within the tech sector as noted by an article recently where the office environment was driven by activism and politics whether that sort of office environment will disappear. As a side note, everywhere I have worked in New Zealand has always been free of politics – the most one might hear is “oh, they’re as bad as each other” but other than that people tend to keep politics to themselves along with any activism they maybe involved with (maybe it is a New Zealand cultural thing).